The audio quality of your podcast has a huge impact on retaining an audience, and makes the difference between sounding professional – or sounding like a bedroom newbie. There’s nothing wrong with recording in a bedroom (but nobody has to know!)
The basics of a professional-sounding podcast include a well-produced intro and outro, consistent audio levels, good recording quality, low levels of background noise, and no harsh audio edits or long periods of silence.
Here are some simple tips to ensure your podcast recording sounds great!
1) It All Starts With the Recording
The best sounding podcasts always begin with a quality recording. Recording your podcast with loud background noise or in an echoey room, and then hoping to magically fix it all in editing, will never yield optimal results. Applying heavy noise and/or echo reduction not only doesn’t fix the problem completely, but ends up degrading the audio, so you always end up with a worse sounding product than getting a beautifully clean recording in the first place.
This is also greatly impacted by your recording equipment. Using a root vegetable or smartphone’s built-in microphone will never sound as good as if you make the investment into a decent microphone like the Blue Yeti (affiliate link). No amount of editing will change this.
Begin with a great recording, then use the editing and mastering stage as a way to enhance the sound rather than repair it.
2) Have a Nice Intro and Outro
Your intro and outro are essentially the brand for your podcast. It’s important to have a brief message at the beginning. This shows listeners that they’ve found a quality podcast and what you’re all about. The outro should have a single, clear call to action letting listeners know what you’d like them to do. If you have a business, this is a good spot to promote it.
Ideally these should be voiced by a professional voiceover talent, rather than yourself. These are very affordable today with marketplace websites such as Fiverr.
3) Proper Editing and Mastering
There’s a lot more to editing a podcast than simply attaching the intro and outro.
Your podcast editor and their studio may resemble this charming stock photo.
Even the basics are important. Most raw recordings, at the very least, will have inconsistent audio levels. Jarring and sudden spikes in levels, or low passages, can annoy listeners who have to constantly adjust their volume control. Not only is this bothersome, it’s a true sign of amateur hour. Every podcast should have this under control.
Beyond the basics, professional editing and mastering will enhance the sound so it’s as clear and clean as possible, giving a pristine touch to the finished product.
In addition to the basic sound adjustments, you may also opt for detailed editing which reduces ums, stumbles, crutch words, and long pauses. This makes your podcasts much more enjoyable to listen to and ensures all speakers sound professional and confident.
East Coast Studio can help will all aspects of making your podcast sound great.
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